I got the kids new shirts for Hanukah. They are cute, and possibly useful to my grandmother with Alzheimers. See for yourself why. They had fun for a while.

And commencing crying in… 3… 2…1…

Poor Celia got hit really hard with the stomach bug last week. She was sick for days and days and didn’t really eat much for almost a week. I could really see it in her arms and legs, they got pretty thin. Thankfully now she is on the mend and is eating almost twice as much as normal. At least her appetite is telling her to make up for what she missed now! Could hardly keep her pants up on her waist today though still.

On the other hand, when she stood up in the dress I was amazed at how tall she’s grown. Last year she wore this dress and it just barely was above the ground! Now I can almost see her knees!

Getting out the door takes a while these days now. Here’s us on an attempt to go to Quebrada last weekend. We haven’t felt well enough to go this weekend yet. Still not eating regularly, Celia is barely eating at all. Lots of soup and crackers for us and plain food.

This past weekend, to try to help with our children feeling like they don’t get any alone time, we had ‘date night’, in the afternoon. My parents took Celia and we took Josie (and Ewan stays with me always cause he’s a baby). Celia originally wanted to get ice cream and go to my parents house, but the draw of their toys was just too much and they skipped the ice cream and went to play. They played games, raked leaves and jumped in them, and ate mandarin oranges. Josie had been wanting to see a movie and so we made some snacks (puppy chow and popcorn) and sat down and watched “The Lorax” with her. She wanted us to turn it off multiple times because it was too scary but she got through it. After we did puzzles. And this is now how we roll doing puzzles. He’s not quite coordinated enough yet to really get a piece in his mouth, just move them around a bit.

The air conditioner is out, my favorite picture taking place in the house is back.

This year for Halloween we took it easy! We had gotten a big pile of pumpkins from Josie’s school’s harvest festival. We took two of them to Sharona and Jeremy’s pumpkin carving party where the girls helped Jordi carve and decorate them. We didn’t even carve the big huge pumpkin, time just gets away from us these days as we try to keep everyone fed, sleeping enough, clothed and moderately happy. Another year we’ll get there. The girls were more active this year for carving at least. They even had previous practice hollowing one out when we cooked our own sugar pumpkin this year.

We also kicked off the Halloween week with a fun get together with some of my mom friends from the baby group I was a part of when Josie was born. Our number of families has dwindled but the number of kids has grown so it was still a fun outing. Celia was displeased at this photo because she wanted to be the one holding Ewan. Connor also declined to get in the picture.

Then on Halloween day we did all our trick or treating almost the entire time between when Josie got out of school till bedtime. We picked her up from school and brought the costumes with us and tossed them on before hitting the local business district for some early practice trick or treating. It got the girls into the habit of  the please and thank you, over some shy times, and seeing people in costume in day light. Celia is at the age where head covering costumes are very scary for her. So we had to hide out and wait for some scary people to leave the area at times before we could continue. At that point, Josie was a yellow princess, Celia was a ballerina and Ewan was a jaguar. Many of the businesses were super generous, like a giant cookie from Olivios and Quebrada just offered up anything in the main case.

After that trick or treating, it started to rain and it was time to go home anyway. We came home, had some candy and some non-candy food. Then we headed over to Waldo park for their annual Halloween party. It’s normally a little more crazy but this year was tame because the rain kept coming and going. The kids did a ‘fashion show’ which consists of walking through a doorway and having your name and costume announced. At this point I think the girls had switched costumes too. We tried to get them to eat some veggie hot dogs and vegetables and remembered to feed ourselves a little too. Then it was time for real trick or treating and I sent Ewan home with Jordi to man our door. We went off with my two plus Josie’s friend Sophie joined us. We made it down Amsden St back to our house at which point Celia wanted a break and stayed home. I took Josie and Sophie down the rest of our street until Sophie said she was ready to go home too, we brought her home and then picked Celia up to finish up a few more houses on the opposite side of our street. Josie was then content. We brought it all home and they dumped out their huge pile of loot. We had even made drop offs of the afternoon candy and still the pumpkins were huge.

Because of the aforementioned rain, plus carrying baby, plus wanting to stay in the moment, you get crummy ipod photos only.

Josie also did a great job carrying around a box for unicef and shaking down the neighbors for money. My favorite was when one person gave her a dollar instead of coins she said “that person gave me the wrong kind of money!” Then I explained how the paper stuff was even better. Her box was stuffed full by the end of the night.

They ate a bunch that night and a few more pieces over each day. They shared with us willingly, what great kids! And then by Tuesday we sent almost all of it to Jordi’s office, and capped off the week of Halloween on Thursday by making some M&M cookies out of the bags I saved for such an event.

Also on Friday after Halloween my dad’s office threw a crazy party. They had crafts for the kids, food that looked liked rats, eyeballs, guts and more gory options, liquid nitrogen ice cream, and custom flip book movies. It was a great time and even had a ‘swamp thing’ cake rumored to weigh 300 lbs! It took up an entire 8ft by 8ft table.

Here’s an interview I did with Celia at age 3.

Q: Who is your favorite person in the whole world?

A: Bronwyn and Blake

Q: What is your favorite color?

A: orange

Q: What is your favorite television show?

A: yo gabba gabba and Mr Rogers

Q: What is your favorite outfit?

A: Balloon ballerina shirt with purple fleece pants

Q: What sport do you like best?

A: bumper cars

Q: What is your favorite breakfast?

A: waffles and sausage

Q: Who is your best friend?

A: Josie

Q: What do you want to be when you grow up?

A: I don’t know

Q: What  is your favorite book?

A: The apple pie tree

Q: What are you really good at?

A: baseball

Q: Where do you wish you could go on vacation?

A: Waldo park and Virginia (their friend Adelaide moved back to Virginia)

Q: What would you buy if you had $1000?

A: a donut

Q: What vegetable do you hate the most?

A: eggs

Q: What is your favorite flavor of ice cream?

A: chocolate

Q: What do you like to do best with your friends?

A: play at the park

That’s her 3rd party celebrating her 3rd birthday that I’m speaking of. This is the family party, in our house, home made cake and oh the presents galore! We request none for the friends parties because oh my do we get quite the pile from our relatives already. We spent a good part of our regular day making Celia’s cake. We chose an ambitious chocolate one because I haven’t really made a chocolate one previously that I’ve liked. I made half the regular cake size though because there aren’t all that many of it. It was super delicious and I’d make it again if I have time. But it definitely took most of the day (along with the rest of the regular child care). Celia picked an owl theme again.

We enjoyed playing the rest of the day and Celia couldn’t wait for everyone to come over and have her preferred dinner, lemon cream pasta with spinach. My poor mom had to bring her own pasta dinner as this isn’t one she could eat.

Celia loved her presents enjoying many new books, crafts and even her own sleepsack (because she kicks the blankets all off and then tries to take ours, see it below). Happy birthday my darling Cecilia!

Celia’s just finished up her third trip around the sun the middle of this month! She continues to be a big ball of stubborn enthusiasm. If she wants to do something she’s all fired up about it, and if she’s not, well… then she’s ‘tired’ and ‘can’t do it’ with the drama of a broadway actress. She will throw the full laying on the floor fits over not wanting to wash her hands. But she’s coming out of it more as she’s getting past her 2’s and getting easier to reason with and explain things to. She’s very interested in logic, that because of A, then B happens. Well she’s big on explaining that B happened because she wanted C D and E. It’s the world according to Celia and it’s a funny stage!

One recent development we’ve figured out is that she likes to play board games! We’ve been enjoying ‘hi ho cherry-oh’, memory games, sorry and uno. She’s still working on learning to count out spaces on a board, but now she is quick to identify the numbers up to six.

These last few months since Ewan have been born have thrown her for a bit of a loop, she switches between wanting to be big like Josie to small like Ewan. She wants to be babied yet she wants to do it herself. As Josie’s been in school now most of the day most days she’s getting more used to playing the role of big sister. She loves Ewan but she always wants to be a bit too close and rough with him. Good thing he’s getting bigger fast so he’ll be more of a playmate before too much longer.

Some of Celia’s favorite games are school, ballet and gymnastics. She loves to play pretend and say goodbye to me that she’s going to a class or school. Almost impossible to keep clothes on her. Plus she can undo the child-lock on the dress up, so I can’t keep her out of it like I used to be able to. We also enjoy cooking together, measuring, pouring and stirring. She loves time in the bath and generally getting messy.

Her art has changed a bit, while she’s always been one to focus on the process so far (not the result), she doesn’t mix everything completely together all the time. She does strive to make a picture look like something at times. She’s even proposed her first painting project to me too, using fingers and hand prints with red, green and yellow. We’ve been doing a lot of fall art with those colors lately.

Celia is taking one gymnastics class this fall and for her birthday she asked for a second one, so she’s got another class starting up soon. She pays very close attention in class and works hard to complete the steps, which is nice to see her listening to someone, even though it’s not me.

Academically I’ve been working with Celia on her letters, one at a time each week. She can identify them up to G and we work on her hand control with scissor practice and tracing and mazes. Celia’s excited to be doing the workbooks like Josie and learning the letter rhymes.

Lately her favorite books and stories are ones of kids behaving badly. Like “David gets in trouble” and “Little daughter and the wolf”. Her favorite part of gymnastics is jumping off the high beam. Yikes.

She’s developing some better self control and listening skills, but we still struggle with that every day. She loves to read with me and we both relish a chance to have a good snuggle. We’ve settled into a good routine with her as the big kid half the time these days. Here’s hoping this forth year will let us all settle in to ourselves with fewer changes and more fun!

• Size/weight: 4T, ~32 lbs, 39.5″
• Favorite foods: tomatoes, cheese, most fruit in general
• Favorite toy: dress up
• Favorite book: lots of variety now, Bernstein bears are popular
• Favorite activity: riding her bike, playing with Josie
• Sleeping: bedtime ~7:30; nap mostly gone but is sometimes needing some extras oddly, gets up by 6:30
• New skill: recognizing letters, excellent scissors and beginning writing
• Teeth: all 20
• Vocalizations: lots of explaining and logic in how the world works in her mind.